


i can see the end as it begins

by afewreelthoughts



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 18:15:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16045901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/pseuds/afewreelthoughts
Summary: Robb Stark wanted more than anything to be needed. Needed on the battlefield, needed by his family, needed by his people, needed in bed. Margaery Tyrell didn’t need him at all.





	i can see the end as it begins

**Author's Note:**

> gift for flymetooasis on tumblr. 
> 
> title from the fact that I listened to Wildest Dreams on a loop while writing this.
> 
> I own nothing and make no money from this. Everything belongs to George R.R. Martin.

Robb Stark wanted more than anything to be needed. Needed on the battlefield, needed by his family, needed by his people, needed in bed.

Margaery Tyrell didn’t need him at all.

From the moment he had seen her across the tourney grounds at Bitterbridge, her eyes had held him like holding something fragile in the palm of her hand. He had wanted nothing more than to bend the knee that very moment… if only to her.

Margaery was kind, and she was courteous, and Robb knew they were not the same thing, but she was both, with every fiber of her being.

At the feast that same night, Robb was seated at the king’s right hand, and he watched her all night. The small folk must have thought that he was hanging on the king’s every word, but really he could not tear his eyes away from her, from the way her silken sleeves moved against her skin, the way she laughed, the way her curls tumbled down her back.

When her husband rose to speak to one of his lords, the space between them left Robb feeling naked. Words tumbled from his lips, a plea for Northern Independence that he could never have made to her husband.

“…and I know that the king may not want to grant us half of…” he said, but she set her hand on his thigh, and his breath left his body.

Margaery smiled. “Leave him to me.”

The king invited Robb to sit with him and his queen every night after dinner, and while they were discussing terms for peace, Robb wondered if his desire was so evident on his face that they just delighted in torturing him.

They had said the treaty was signed between the King on the Iron Throne and the King in the North, but the Queen set the terms more than either of them. Perhaps she seduced her husband with charms so ethereal that he did not even know what she was doing. Robb wondered that as well, if she was working some spell on him that he could not understand, but he found that he did not care. They said the Red Woman was a witch, but the Queen from Highgarden could cast a spell with a mere smile.

Robb followed them south, like iron to a lodestone, and stood at the front of the crowd when she and her husband were crowned. They both glowed in the light of Baelor’s Sept, faces shining with a thousand different colors. Robb might actually have thought this was a song, if his belly did not ache with the thought that he would return to Winterfell, which seemed a world away.

When they saw Robb in the crowd, lords and ladies and courtiers remarked how they were “Just like Ned and Robert before them,” but Robb didn’t know Renly well, and Renly didn’t seem to want to be known. And his father had never dreamed of stealing away between Queen Cersei’s legs.

The train from Margaery’s dress filled the center aisle of the Sept, heavy with golden beads and embroidered with flowers of every color of the rainbow. She walked behind her husband, followed by the High Septon himself. The edge of her train brushed against Robb’s boot, scuffed and smudged, and for just a moment she glanced in his direction.

He knew he had to leave, for himself if for nothing else. He could no longer be pulled from joy to despair and back again by the look in her eyes.

He had no reason to be there, standing before her door that night, after the candles in the great hall had faded long ago died down and the celebration of King Renly and Queen Margaery’s coronation headed into the feverish early hours of the morning. He did not even know if anyone was on the other side of the door.

He tapped his knuckles against the heavy wood.

“Yes?” Margaery said.

He opened the door, and she stood at the edge of her bed, wearing a nightdress of golden silk.

Robb looked at his feet. “I’m here to say goodbye.”

There was a long, long silence, and then the words, “I’ll be sorry to see you go.”

He had already nearly closed the door behind him, and he knew if he closed it fully, he would be lost. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, and met her eyes. 

“I know,” she said. She untied the cord on her nightdress, and it pooled around her feet like liquid gold.

Robb shut the door. 

Her lips tasted like wine, and he let himself be led inside, losing himself in her. 

Perhaps this would be enough, he thought, when he was again capable of thinking, one single night with her worth a lifetime of love with another woman. As he rode away from King’s Landing, the memory of her skirts billowing in the wind as she stood outside the Red Keep, just to see him go, he had no choice but to believe it.


End file.
